To manage or to monitor information associated with nodes (e.g., computer nodes, storage server nodes, web server nodes, application server nodes, and so forth), graphical user interface (GUI) software can be used to present a GUI window that displays icons representing the nodes. Typically, information about the nodes is displayed with the corresponding icons. For small-scale arrangements of nodes (that have relatively small numbers of nodes), icons representing the nodes can be effectively viewed in a GUI window. A relatively small number of icons can easily fit within a GUI window displayed by a display device. However, as the number of nodes increase, then even tiny icons will have trouble fitting in a large GUI window. Attempting to fit a large number of icons representing corresponding nodes into a GUI window will cause clutter in the GUI window, and prevent the user from easily identifying information associated with any specific node. Moreover, with small icons, the amount of information associated with each icon that can be displayed is reduced such that the user will unlikely be able to view any meaningful information regarding any node.
Some conventional GUI tools represent each node as a “blob” in which just one piece of information associated with the corresponding node is presented, which denies the user the ability to simultaneously view other information associated with nodes. Also, other conventional GUI tools provide for scrolling to allow the display of larger icons; however, having to scroll to different parts of a display window does not allow the user to view the entire arrangement of icons representing corresponding nodes.